Governor: Prison break took days
DANNEMORA, N.Y. – Two murderers who used power tools to escape from prison must have taken days to cut through steel walls and pipes and break through the bricks, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Sunday as a $100,000 reward was posted for information leading to their capture.
Authorities were investigating how the inmates obtained the power tools they used in the “Shawshank Redemption”-style breakout over the weekend.
“It was a sophisticated plan,” Cuomo said. “It took a period of time, no doubt, to execute.”
David Sweat, 34, was serving a sentence of life without parole for the 2002 killing of a sheriff’s deputy. Richard Matt, 48, had been sentenced to 25 years to life for kidnapping, killing and dismembering his former boss in 1997.
Excavation work begins at park’s cave
SIOUX FALLS, S.D.– The National Park Service is finally beginning to excavate the opening of an unexplored cave in the Black Hills of South Dakota that researchers believe could help broaden our understanding of how the region’s climate has changed over thousands of years.
Employees at Wind Cave National Park discovered Persistence Cave in 2004. The federal agency kept it secret, partly to prevent amateur spelunkers from exploring on their own until they could get inside.
A team of scientists, led by Eastern Tennessee University professor Jim Mead begin excavating the cave Monday.
Mead says preliminary samples from the cave shows bones as old as 11,000 years, or around the latest Ice Age. He says looking at which animals lived in the region then will help understand how it hass changed.
Associated Press
